It’s not often that a person goes through a life-threatening accident and comes out the other side fully healed and with no lasting injuries. That’s why when such things happen, people often develop a newfound joy for life and passion to pursue anything and everything that interests them.

Take, for example, Flavia Abadía, a Canadian singer/songwriter interviewed by a Writing and Reporting the News journalism class at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA). She lives in Toronto, but was traveling in Miami in 2013 when she found that her life was about to change forever.

During the aforementioned incident in 2013, Abadía was riding in a taxi on her way home from attending a public event when, out of nowhere, she ended up a victim of a drunken driver in a violent car crash that left her with a traumatic brain injury and over a decade of recovery.

“For four weeks, I was lying in the dark because I couldn’t be exposed to light or sound,” said Abadía during her class-wide interview. “I had to learn to walk again.”

This injury would eventually come to be a blessing in disguise for Abadía, who (once approved to do so by her doctor) spent her time recovering listening to music, an activity that ultimately ended up rekindling her lifelong passion for both creating music and DJing. Abadía was given a second chance at life, and she had no intentions of wasting the opportunity, declaring: “When I had recovered enough, I told myself, ‘Okay, I’m going to do what I want with my life now.’”

It didn’t take long for Abadía to discover that creating music was the direction she wanted to steer her life in, but this path wasn’t one that came easily to her. Abadía faced the daunting challenge of having to make a name for herself in an industry saturated with thousands of other people all trying to do the same exact thing. Her struggles all culminated when she eventually had to fire her producer for trying to control her sound instead of working with her and developing her own ideas. “Sure, it was awkward for me since it was the first time I had to do it,” said Abadía when questioned, “but as an artist you need to make sure the people you’re working with understand your vision and work with the ebb and flow.”

Through trial and error, Abadía eventually found her footing and has been making strides in the time since then. When asked what big moments she has had in her career thus far, she mentioned that one of her biggest by far was “DJing a Toronto Raptors game. At the end, I got to perform and play my own songs.”

There is no doubt that Abadía is on the up-and-up. As a young woman in the music industry, she has already played for live sporting events, sold out small venues at concerts, and made herself known as a local DJ. When asked what advice she would give to other creators struggling to make a name for themselves, Abadía had this to say: “Get your own lawyer. Get educated on the music industry. Create, explore, and also observe. Find out why other people are successful and see what keeps other people from being successful.” Most of all, she found it important that people should “take a break if [they] need to. As an artist, you need to take care of yourself first.”

Sometimes in life, people go through awful things. What’s most important is what one can do with the cards they have been dealt. Instead of succumbing to the pain, one can always try to fight and rise above their circumstances to follow their dreams. And make no mistake, when it comes to the music industry, there are no guarantees.

But take it from Abadía, who had to learn how to walk again: “I don’t know what the future holds, but right now I’m doing what I love. I just put one foot in front of the other.”